Hacker News Reader

Comment by empath75 | Hacker News Reader

My advice if you want to be a DJ is to skip learning how to mix with turntables and go straight to ableton live. It took me years to get good at beatmatching, and played gigs in front of thousands of people, but you can be perfect with a few hours spent learning ableton live, with as many effects and filters as you could possibly want. I switched to ableton basically the second I found out about it and never went back.

It’s really hard to do what Jeff mills is doing with turntables. Like years and years of many hours a day practice.

You can recreate it in ableton live with absolutely no practice at all and then do more stuff on top of it.

Of course ableton doesn’t tell you the right moments to mix or the right songs or the right way to filter and so on, so there is still a lot of artistry and skill, but just in terms of dexterity, it’s a lot easier.

View on HN

This is terrible advice. It’s like telling someone to not learn how to program, just use wix for your websites.

If you want to learn how to dj, learn to mix on turntables, cdjs, or a controller. IMO, you’re missing a lot of fun if you rely on Ableton for everything and you have less control over your mixes. You can do just as much with Serato fx as you can Ableton effects if that’s your worry.

I am an ex-techno DJ and have had quite a number of bookings in the UK as well as produced a few tracks of my own too. I made the switch to Ableton years ago when I found turntables actually hampered my creativity (and I don't say this likely since I was a competent in 3 decks and beat-mixing tracks of different time signatures - which is a hard skill to learn)

Beat mixing is only a very small part of DJing and is not a creative part of the process. It's a technical skill - nothing more.

Telling people they must learn how to beat mix on turntables before learning Ableton is like saying someone must learn how to paint with oil paints before they're allowed to use Photoshop. What actually matters is what enables performers to create the best live performance.

One thing I will agree with you on is that I have more of an emotional connection with vinyl because I'm physically connecting with the playback media. I've never gotten the same emotional connection with CDs nor Ableton. However this is a tactile response and nothing to do with the music itself so the audience wouldn't experience that.

> Beat mixing is only a very small part of DJing and is not a creative part of the process. It's a technical skill - nothing more.

This. I spent years djing at clubs and opened for some of the biggest names in the world and know tons of djs and producers. Nobody talks about beatmatching except people just getting started. A lot of people learned it because it was the only way to mix records for a long time, but to me, it's an utterly pointless skill to have any more.

Yup. Beat mixing is the easier part. I've heard plenty of DJ's who could mix but had shite song selection and/or had no idea how to read and motivate a crowd.

You can teach a monkey to beat match. You can't teach a monkey to be a DJ.

One downside of using laptops is that it can create a barrier between dj and crowd, I've seen lots of people who only learned djing on a laptop not mastering their performance anxiety and instead burying their face in the screen as much as possible. I always enjoyed when djs made an effort to be 'with the crowd' and always tried to do so myself - not having a screen around for every gig can help learning not to play like a turtle.

Fair point. I usually moved the screen off the side and used an apc40 to control it so I looked at the screen very little, other than to check which songs were mapped to which buttons. Certainly no more time away from the crowd than djs digging through record bags.

FWIW, it's just as easy to spend all your time looking at your turntables when you're mixing, especially when you aren't very good at beatmatching. When I was first getting started, it often took me like 2-3 minutes to get the beatmatching right, and spent almost all of that time looking at the turntables and not the crowd. Of course when I sucked at beatmatching, "the crowd" i was playing for was 5 or 10 people, half of which came with me.

I've heard this argument made a thousand times and I still don't believe it because there are plenty of vinyl DJs who don't interact and lots of laptop DJs who are pulling all sorts of stunts on stage to entertain the crowds.

What matters more than the medium is the individual who's playing from them.

I've performed a lot, both from a laptop and from vinyl (and a fair few times with both too) and anecdotally I can say using a laptop has never defined how much of a spectacle I choose to make of myself. The amount I've slept beforehand or whisky I've drank has a much bigger effect ;)

> I am an ex-techno DJ and have had quite a number of bookings in the UK as well as produced a few tracks of my own too.

Why does this matter? If you want dick swinging, I'll probably beat you anyday. I'm a DMC finalist and toured with a few big rap groups and on my own for more than half of my life. All this is irrelevant. We're talking about skills vs faking the funk here.

> Beat mixing is only a very small part of DJing and is not a creative part of the process. It's a technical skill - nothing more.

It is a part of djing and it is a creative part of the process. Maybe you didn't get creative with it and that's perfectly fine. However, others have gotten creative with it(Z-trip, dj shadow, cut chemist, jrocc, mr choc, daft punk, and many more).

> Telling people they must learn how to beat mix on turntables before learning Ableton is like saying someone must learn how to paint with oil paints before they're allowed to use Photoshop. What actually matters is what enables performers to create the best live performance.

So if you're going for face value then yes, I can go up on stage with my laptop, play an mp3, dance to the music in front of thousands, and entertain people all day. This is entertainment but this isn't djing. I'm talking about raw skill. Sounds like you prefer someone to lip sync than actual sing on stage. Same thing.

> I've never gotten the same emotional connection with CDJs nor Ableton. However the audience wouldn't experience that.

They will if you're good at your craft.

> I've never gotten the same emotional connection with CDJs nor Ableton. However the audience wouldn't experience that.

>They will if you're good at your craft.

This - 100%. I can't agree more. When you feel what you're doing, the audience should feel it also. That's what keeps me doing it now after 20+ years (when I don't really have to, in order to pay the bills anymore!). It's that moment, of a connection, and the spine tingling chill/buzz you get when you pull off a great mix in the moment and the audience feel it too.

That wasn't what I was arguing though. I was saying vinyl feels nicer because it's more tactile but the audience shouldn't be groping your record collection.

Feeling the music (rather than touching the media) is a different matter. You can emotionally connect with the music being played regardless of the playback medium.

I love watching Kaytranada's Boiler Room set for just that reason - the energy he's able to put out into the audience is so magical.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5EQIiabJvk

You are why people hate turntablists. You gatekeep the “DJ” craft with your one true way and worship Jazzy Jeff, and look down on everyone who’s not standing between two 1200s, despite most of your kin moving onto DVS or other emulation anyway.

You keep sitting on HN and talking about that one time you opened for DMC and shitting on a techno DJ who does nothing like what you do, and we will keep producing creative experiences in OUR format using the same equipment you do in different ways.

This is like working on a riced-out sleeper Civic versus building a rally WRX. Yeah, we both use socket wrenches, but the cars are built entirely differently. I wouldn’t come over to your garage and lecture you about suspension travel, and you wouldn’t come to my garage to lecture me about whatever it is Civic dragsters care about (turbo pressure?). There are similarities. There are differences.

Your craft is fading into irrelevance. You shouldn’t be gatekeeping kids who click with Live just because something worked for you. Techno and turntablism are dramatically different styles. Extol the virtues of doing it your way and respect that there are others. Last time I stood behind Daft Punk while they worked (swing-a-ling), they were not working the way you think they are, by the way, so you might want to check your examples.

This might surprise you, but if people leave one of my venues feeling good and have absolutely no recollection of who I am, I still count that as a victory. I’m there for the music, not how fast I can crab walk a cross. I recognize turntablists view their self promotion differently and make the evening about them, which is why technical skill on the deck matters. I welcome trainspotters in my booth so they can see how easy it is to express themselves creatively and give their friends a good time. It’s just a way more positive vibe than... whatever it is you’re doing here.

> You are why people hate turntablists. You gatekeep the “DJ” craft with your one true way and worship Jazzy Jeff, and look down on everyone who’s not standing between two 1200s, despite most of your kin moving onto DVS or other emulation anyway.

Wrong.

> You keep sitting on HN and talking about that one time you opened for DMC and shitting on a techno DJ who does nothing like what you do, and we will keep producing creative experiences in OUR format using the same equipment you do in different ways.

You mad. Who said I didn't mix techno using other equipment? Because I was in DMC, I'm just a tablist now? I was in a technical discussion and you just poured a bunch of salt into this

> Your craft is fading into irrelevance. You shouldn’t be gatekeeping kids who click with Live just because something worked for you. Techno and turntablism are dramatically different styles. Extol the virtues of doing it your way and respect that there are others. Last time I stood behind Daft Punk while they worked (swing-a-ling), they were not working the way you think they are, by the way, so you might want to check your examples.

Yeah, skratching isnt as fun as it used to be which is why I've only been mixing for years now so I'll give you that one. Who was gatekeeping kids who click live? I wasn't. I was in a technical discussion about djing.

> This might surprise you, but if people leave one of my venues feeling good and have absolutely no recollection of who I am, I still count that as a victory. I’m there for the music, not how fast I can crab walk a cross. I recognize turntablists view their self promotion differently and make the evening about them, which is why technical skill on the deck matters. I welcome trainspotters in my booth so they can see how easy it is to express themselves creatively and give their friends a good time. It’s just a way more positive vibe than... whatever it is you’re doing here.

cool? How was I creating a negative vibe?

> if people leave one of my venues feeling good and have absolutely no recollection of who I am, I still count that as a victory.

I always thought of party promotion and djing as a single holistic art form and that the crowd was actually the creative product and not the music and the lights or anything else. At the end of the day, you're building a community and want people leaving saying they just had the best night of their life, and music is only a part of it.

> Why does this matter? If you want dick swinging, I'll probably beat you anyday. I'm a DMC finalist and toured with a few big rap groups and on my own for more than half of my life. All this is irrelevant. We're talking about skills vs faking the funk here.

It's relevant because it's a conversation about techno and I'm explaining I have direct insight into DJing techno.

DMC is an entirely difference scene where "turntablism" is more of a thing so I can see why you might argue the case for learning to beat mix but those arguments don't apply to techno.

> It is a part of djing and it is a creative part of the process. Maybe you didn't get creative with it and that's perfectly fine.

You cannot get creative with beat matching. The process of beat matching is literally just quantising two tracks together. Everything else beyond that is "mixing" - which is where the creative process happens. But that is not "beat matching".

The distinction I'm making is vital because you can do creative beat mixing without having to do any beat matching.

> Maybe you didn't get creative with it and that's perfectly fine.

I do and please don't make personal assumptions about me.

> So if you're going for face value then yes, I can go up on stage with my laptop, play an mp3, dance to the music in front of thousands, and entertain people all day. This is entertainment but this isn't djing. I'm talking about raw skill. Sounds like you prefer someone to lip sync than actual sing on stage. Same thing.

All DJing is just playing other peoples records. You're not up there with a guitar ffs. So it doesn't matter if it's an vinyl or an MP3 - that's just a technical detail. What actually matters is how you mix those records, not beat match them.

> They will if you're good at your craft.

You do realise you just argued that "The audience will physically touch your vinyl if you're a good DJ" - a statement which suggests you throw sharp plastic objects into the crowd. Clearly you wouldn't do this - which means you should probably go back and re-read what I'd written ;)

> You cannot get creative with beat matching

This is patently false, and particularly turntablists know it. There are several ways to match beats that are hard for computers (e.g. 3 over 4), or manually swinging the beat (computers don't have the funk), particularly to match a live band or instrument.

I understand why people like Ableton, but don't pretend it's not limiting to expressivity. It's like why piano players still play chords manually instead of just triggering them -- the analog human input actually makes it sound better than worse and the human aspect is usually what the audience came for.

> This is patently false, and particularly turntablists know it. There are several ways to match beats that are hard for computers (e.g. 3 over 4), or manually swinging the beat (computers don't have the funk), particularly to match a live band or instrument.

Actually the main reason I switched to Ableton was because it was much easier to match music that isn't quantised because I started to throw in a lot of rock, metal and industrial sounds into my techno sets. What I wanted was long mixes with such tracks and while I could "drop" non-dance tracks in with vinyl, the effect wasn't as polished nor as sympathetic to the techno sound I was trying to achieve. This is in spite of me already being an accomplished multi-deck DJ who was competent with mixing different time signatures and other quirky tracks that many others might avoid.

I do still love my decks though. It's not an "either / or" for me. I'd alternate between the different formats depending on the gig and the sound I wanted to create.

> I understand why people like Ableton, but don't pretend it's not limiting to expressivity

Limiting in some ways, liberating in others. Vinyl has it's own limiting factors too. They're just different tools with different advantages and disadvantages. Saying one is better than the other is purely a subjective opinion based on the DJing style of the person arguing it.

> I understand why people like Ableton, but don't pretend it's not limiting to expressivity.

Every choice you make is limiting. There are things you can do with ableton you simply cannot do with turntable mixing alone.

> DMC is an entirely difference scene where "turntablism" is more of a thing so I can see why you might argue the case for learning to beat mix but those arguments don't apply to techno.

I started mixing and continue to do it to this day. It's important for anyone who is djing.

> You cannot get creative with beat matching. The process of beat matching is literally just quantising two tracks together. Everything else beyond that is "mixing" - which is where the creative process happens. But that is not "beat matching".

Sure, I'll give you that

> All DJing is just playing other peoples records. You're not up there with a guitar ffs. So it doesn't matter if it's an vinyl or an MP3 - that's just a technical detail. What actually matters is how you mix those records, not beat match them.

Technical detail is what this discussion is about. I never use the term "beat matching" because it's kind of been all in one for me. However, "beat matching" does matter. You're telling me that train wrecking is okay as long as it's mixed good.

> You do realise you just argued that "The audience will physically touch your vinyl if you're a good DJ" - a statement which suggests you throw sharp plastic objects into the crowd. Clearly you wouldn't do this - which means you should probably go back and re-read what I'd written ;)

I was referring to what you said:

"I've never gotten the same emotional connection with CDJs nor Ableton."

I feel like you're jabbing at me now. I wasn't trying to be disrespectful. If you want to play that game, well, we could do that all day. Not helping anyone out though.

> I started mixing and continue to do it to this day. It's important for anyone who is djing.

Mixing clear is. The discussion was whether beat matching live matters. (you still need to quantise your tracks if you use Ableton but you do it before the gig rather than during it).

> Technical detail is what this discussion is about. I never use the term "beat matching" because it's kind of been all in one for me. However, "beat matching" does matter. You're telling me that train wrecking is okay as long as it's mixed good.

Nobody was arguing that train wrecking your way through each mix is a good thing. Nor was I arguing that we shouldn't discuss the technical detail.

> I was referring to what you said:(

> > "I've never gotten the same emotional connection with CDJs nor Ableton."*

Yes, but you ignored the first part where I discussed that I was talking about the tactile sensation rather than the musicality. That context is essential to the sentence you quoted.

> I feel like you're jabbing at me now. I wasn't trying to be disrespectful. If you want to play that game, well, we could do that all day. Not helping anyone out though.

Sorry if you feel that way - I assure you that wasn't my intention. However you're not really in a position to play the sympathy card given the tone of your posts leading up to this point.

>All DJing is just playing other peoples records. You're not up there with a guitar ffs

aren't you the guy that was talking about ableton a couple parts back?

Yes. Your point being?

I've DJed on vinyl, CDs and Ableton. My most creative sets have come from Ableton as I've been able to mash up music from genres I simply couldn't have if I were beat mixing them on vinyl (which was actually the reason I learned Ableton in the first place). However I'm still ostensibly just playing other peoples music.

There is a lot of ego amongst some DJs where they liken themselves to musicians but it is a great deal harder to write music and perform that - live - than it is to DJ (this I know from experience as well). Which is why I objected when the OP made the comparison of himself to a band performing.

> I simply couldn't have if I were beat mixing them on vinyl

As an example I have mixed from house at 125bpm straight into drum and bass at 175, gradually adjusting the tempo during the transition with ableton live while keeping both records perfectly in sync and without pitch shifting either. You simply can't do that with turntables..

> I'm a DMC finalist and toured with a few big rap groups and on my own for more than half of my life. All this is irrelevant. We're talking about skills vs faking the funk here.

Turntablists and edm djs live in very different worlds with different audiences and different expectations.

I used to do event promotion for an extremely large weekly EDM event and turntablists (including very big names and DMC winners) just cleared the room almost every time we booked them, even if people appreciated the technical ability. The thing is that EDM audiences aren't interested in how hard the dj is working -- they just want to forget where they are and dance and not think about how the music gets made.

Lol I'll battle you for money on the mixxing tip anytime. I mixed for years before I started skratching and continue to mix more than skratching to this day.

There are some tablist who don't mix and yeah, they're weak. Don't assume that all of them don't know how to mix though.

Dj battling is such a foreign concept to me as a trance/techno dj. Like I'm not sure how you're supposed to compare two different djs that play 9 records an hour. Like woo, you really picked a subtle key change to lift up the energy slightly after building tension for 20 minutes by playing repetitive drum-heavy tracks!

lol Check out redbull 3style. You made me laugh though. Thanks.

> DJs are given 15 minutes

Lol, at 15 minutes, i'm like halfway into my second song, lol.

I used to rage at the pointlessness of 1 hour sets, I wouldn't even bother with a gig that advertised 15 minute slots.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this conversation is a musical journey. That is a talent in itself. A surprisingly difficult on in fact - which even many top DJs don't do well. But it's a very different style of DJing to the stuff DMC turntablists would be adept at.

It's two different worlds - like comparing progressive rock to punk and saying "they're both guitar music"

For a long time in the U.K. they didn't even beat match, because being a DJ was about song selection and arrangement.

It's not that hard to learn to mix well with turntables, especially if you have a background in music production or instruments. It's a logarithmic curve, I think you can get there in ~2 months, putting in some time daily. Compared to learning how to play any musical instrument well, it's rather trivial.

It's probably harder to get good at handling the mixer, levels and EQ as DJ software abstracts this away with auto-gain (again if you have no solid experience in sound engineering). Learning how to choose good cue points (phrasing) will again take some time if you have no idea about musical composition, but it can be simplified (usually 16-32 bars, outro -> intro, breakdown -> buildup). On top of that, add 'harmonic mixing'.

The thing is, if you don't put in the time to learn beatmatching by ear and hands, you likely won't learn how to listen attentively. Even if you auto-match the tempos based on BPM, you'll get ugly phase mismatches on the kicks and snares/claps that will sound bad and you won't even be able to notice how a small nudge could make it all gel much better.

Another tendency is to simply mix and switch tracks too fast because you have nothing else to do, the software makes it instant. The audience always takes a longer time to get into a track than you.

But in the end, I've seen no correlation between skill and event lineups.

Source: 15+ years of experience

While I sort of agree with the sentiment of this, I really can't see any downside to learning how to do a decent mix on a pair of turntables. It helps to break things down to the bare minimums, no fx, no beat-sync, nothing. Basically, if you can pull off a great mix with just two dekcs and a mixer, you'll be fine to move forward with whatever else you choose to use.

Plus you know (and hopefully respect) where it all started / came from.

I've worked as a DJ and have roughly 10 years experience using Ableton Live. When I've used Ableton for DJing, I've found it's really good if you set up your set and performance macros (filters, delays, reverbs, other effects) in advance.

I'd actually recommend Traktor (https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/traktor/) if you want some training wheels/assistance getting all the beatmatching stuff right. It's a really great compromise between "live-ness" and all of the handy functionality you get from using software.

Some CDJs have pretty reliable/great sounding effects built in that do the job really well.

I never properly learned DJ-ing with turntables, but that’s how I first got introduced to it, and I must say the inherent simplicity (hard, but simple!) of that setup made it easier to understand how mixing works.

There’s definitely an elitist side to the new turntable purism though and I think DJ-ing with software is much more practical and accessible for most. Although I think it makes sense to try out turntables at some point just to understand where it comes from.

When you talk about mixing in Ableton, the one thing I wonder about is the live aspect. In most DJ-software it’s super easy to set cue points and loops and do remixes on the fly. As far as I understand, with Ableton you’d have to prepare your track properly by cutting it up in ‘clips’ before-hand. Or does that become super fast with practice?

I usually marked them up ahead of time, but it doesn't take very long to add a loop point on the fly. I'd usually have maybe 40 or 50 songs ready to go for a 2 hour set and play maybe a third of them? It was very very rare that I'd add in another song, usually from a request. When you're djing a lot you don't tend to change your live set that much. So doing prep work is like moving around a dozen songs between sets maybe.

> My advice if you want to be a DJ is to skip learning how to mix with turntables and go straight to ableton live.

Mixxx[0] is a good free/libre option (not necessarily for doing what Ableton does, but for DJing).

[0]: https://mixxx.org/

This is terrible advice, and completely misses the point of the article.

  It’s really hard to do what Jeff mills is doing with turntables. Like years and years of many hours a day practice.

You are right it's really hard, but that's exactly what makes Jeff Mills a special and respected DJ; that virtuosity is the art of DJing. Anyone can skip all of the hard work, just learn Ableton Live, let the software sync everything for you, and blend two tracks together. But there's no art in that.

That said, Ableton and other digital DJing software are a perfectly good place to learn and grow, just not a substitute for putting in the hard work.

It's about the music that comes out of your performance - you don't get extra points for doing it the hard way. Some people will admire the skill but they might also admire DJ-ing while playing Tetris with your other hand. If you get the same results by doing it the easier way - all the better.

> just not a substitute for putting in the hard work

It appears that it is. Well, not really of course, the actual important part of choosing what, when and how to mix, responding to the audience and creating the atmosphere - that's something you still have to do.

It's a substitute for _learning how to beatmatch_ which is incredibly time consuming and a big barrier to getting started.

In the end its about music after all. You can be shitty on Turntables but as well on Ableton Live. Beatmatching is only the groundwork of good mixing. Jeff Mills is great both in technial but also musical terms.

I agree. I think he's a genius. But I think it's easy to look at what he's doing and think that the turntable part is the genius part and it's really like 10% of it, but it's a huge barrier to get started.

Ableton is actually worse at beatmatching than the human ear. A trained human can easily recognize a shift of 11ms, which is a fraction of a BPM [0]. Beat matching algorithms are not as good or reliable, leading to "thick" beats where the two tracks aren't quite aligned, causing weird audio artifacts.

Of course, if you never learn to beatmatch by ear (and never learn to drum), you probably won't develop the skill, leading you to think the mix is right on while educated listeners are cringing.

Effects and filters only sound good if the underlying mix is great. Effects and filters are widely overused... Just like in Photoshop. Better just to start with fundamentally good art, it will need less additions.

[0]: At 130bpm, a tenth of a beat is 46ms, so if both tracks are auto-beatmatched to one-tenth of a beat precision (130.0) as is the typical accuracy claim of every major dj tool, it's still 4x less accurate than the human ear. (1000ms * 60s)/(130bpm * 10)

> Ableton is actually worse at beatmatching than the human ear.

I never relied on the automatic beat detection. I manually adjusted the beat markers on every single track I played ahead of time. For most EDM the BPM doesn't waver at all, and most producers tend to use round numbers, so it's generally not actually that hard. The only trick is being consistent about where in the kick you mark it. I tend to use the snare/claps to calibrate, because those are generally where you can tell if there's drift. It's also easy to shift a track by a few milliseconds live if you notice that it's a bit off.

> it's still 4x less accurate than the human ear.

It's still way way more consistent than even the best analog turntables. You have to adjust constantly when mixing with technic 1200s because of drift.

Yes, every track has a different matching point, you're quite right and that's the attribute of bpm most difficult for computers: which peaks to count?

Manually pre-setting tracks has to be very consistent too -- if you pick claps on one track and go for snare on another, claps might bias the upbeat and snare the downbeat and when Ableton matches the tracks the kick will sound off.

That's the problem as you identify: any two tracks may have a sound that matches best for that particular mix point, so it might need to be adjusted live.

But if you are adjusting tracks live by a few ms... It sounds like you have learned beatmatching and are using it!

To your other point: analog turntables, especially 1200s in good shape, do not drift. A proper beatmatch can and should ride the whole track. Multiple manufacturers make turntables of this quality. The error you saw was either poorly maintained equipment or an inexperienced DJ.

To be clear -- I learned how to beatmatch and played gigs on vinyl for crowds of thousands of people. I know how to do it. Even in terrible conditions (like "no monitor or headphones" bad). Ableton is simply a lot better at it.

> A proper beatmatch can and should ride the whole track

You are simply wrong if you think two technics 1200s of the quality that are in most clubs maintain sub-11ms accuracy over the course of a 5 minute mix. They drift and wobble.

Depending on the musical niche, mixing with turntables and actual vinyl records earns you valuable respect, at least until you make a name for yourself.

Facts!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com